"A small taper seems to be what the market is expecting," says former Fed economist Joseph Gagnon, who thinks the central bank will pull back its bond purchases to somewhere between $70bn and $75bn a month.
That slowdown, though, may make it less likely that the Fed will pull back on its bond purchases, something that could lift stocks.
Investors have long known that the central bank would eventually pull back from its bond purchases, which are intended to lower interest rates and get people to borrow and spend more.
Traders continue to look for clues from the Fed, which began a two-day meeting on Tuesday, about when it might pull back on its bond-buying stimulus program.
Since Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, indicated in May that the Fed may pull back on its bond-buying programs, investors have moved out of bonds, which has driven up interest rates and pushed down the value of existing bonds.
The market has been in flux since May 22, when Mr. Bernanke said that the Fed would consider pulling back on its bond-buying program if measures of the economy, especially hiring, improve.
Barclays, along with other banks in recent days, reported a sharp drop in trading revenue as the banks struggled to divine when the United States Federal Reserve would pull back on its bond-buying program intended to stimulate the American economy.
The figure is nearly half of the total amount of money that was pulled from bond mutual funds and exchange traded funds, through June 26, according to Lipper.
Senator Cogdill, the author of a comprehensive water bond package passed by the California Legislature in November 2009, watched in unhappiness on Monday night as that same legislature pulled the bond from the November 2010 election.
Investors expect the central bank to pull back further on its bond-buying economic stimulus program, as it has done for the last two meetings.
